The rain is finally falling here in beautiful (if a little parched) Austin, Texas. This rain is really coming down and we could not be happier about it. Really, it is so lovely to hear that beautiful sound.

Naturally, rain gets me to thinking about rain boots. Jimmy Choo just put their spin on a rain boot last year: This really cracks me up, I gotta say.

When I’m jumping in puddles, I’m pretty happy to wear my cowboy boots or just take my shoes off. But, I guess if you want to spend $300 on rubber shoes more power to ya.

Now please excuse me, my darling husband has just gone out to frolic in the rain with our dogs and I need to get that on video.

I recently got married and made a lot of stuff for the wedding. I made my dress,

The Dress- photo by Suzanne Koett

I made boots for my husband,

my darling, as photographed by Suzanne Koett

I made boots for my mother, I made tablecloths and runners and oh-so-many decisions. The craziness of planning a wedding finally over, I finally feel like I can move forward with my work. More photos of the wedding to come…

Next on the block is a weekly class at Studio Griffin where I will be teaching a small group of adult students how to make a leather clutch. This is a great class for people with minimal experience who will walk out after four two-hour sessions with a very high quality, beautiful bag. There is still room in the class, which starts the first Wednesday night in July. Click on the link above or email me at juliawardboots@gmail.com for more information.

So, I was looking at one of my favorite shoe company’s website: John Fluevog. This company was founded 40 years ago in a sort of incidental fashion. The owner found a bunch of old Victorian shoes and thought to sell them. They were a huge hit and suddenly, he had a shoe company. So he started designing shoes and some of them are pretty wild. I had a pair of seafoam green loafers with pale blue harlequin diamonds on them. Frankly, they were pretty uncomfortable, but, man, they were really really neat to look at.

The designs now are colorful and fun and, while still a little out there, there is enough of a selection that even a more staid and conservative shoe wearer can find something fun.

But for me, the best thing is seeing how things are made and learning new ways or watching experts in their craft do their thing. This video shows a small factory in South America somewhere (forgive me for not researching where exactly it is) making a pair of pretty darn cute purple heels. I really like seeing the extensive and somewhat scary use of the knives. I loooove working with my knife. And most bootmakers use their straight knife for just about everything.

Hey all, welcome to my blog. It is here that I will post pictures of my work in progress and footwear and artwork that I think is cool or interesting. So hey, check it out. It’ll be fun for the both of us!